Chapter 13: The Promises and Pitfalls of Peace Education Evaluation

Peace educators provide awareness of the problems of violence and teach about the efficacy of peace strategies to alleviate violence. They promote the values of planetary stewardship, global citizenship, and human understanding (Reardon, 1988). Peace education advocates assume that citizens who become alarmed about the dangers of violence and learn how to promote peace will do something to change their behavior and the political systems that promote war and environmental damage, and that those actions will reduce destruction. They trust that by teaching conflict resolution skills, they can reduce levels of violence.

Education implies, at best, a change in consciousness. In most cases it implies learning facts and theories—information that may or may not result in a change in attitudes or behavior (Ajzen, 1988; McCauley, 2002). Even if peace educators persuade students about the dangers of violence and instill in them a desire to do something about those threats, students may not have the will, the capacity, the knowledge, the skills, nor the power to take action that would result in a more peaceful world. Therefore peace educators face an important quandary: How can they best assess their effectiveness in bringing peace to the world?